Peter and Anne Venton are both researchers from Canada, they are respectively concerned with economic inequality and human rights from an environmental point of view. In November 2014, they were on a tour in Taiwan, giving speeches in various cities about "the Radical Changes in Canadian Democracy for the Ecology and the Public Good" and "The Environment, Women and Human Rights".

We caught up with them at the end of the tour of Taiwan for a brief interview.

Anne Venton talks about the necessity of enshrining the right to a clean environment in the Constitution.

In Taipei the mountains are never far away. How easy it is to escape from the city and discover a different pace of life. Human voices rise above the roar of the traffic, and in the safety of the mountains people form communities and express themselves in ways that could not happen in an urban setting, for all its apparent conveniences and freedoms. Filmed around Tiger Mountain, 2013.

Abdullah is from Yemen but grew up in Saudi Arabia. He came to Taiwan to travel and to discover a new culture and way of life. Here he shares his experience of Taiwanese religion and spirituality and compares it with his religion, Islam, on a walk around Longshan Temple.

Max Savage is a young French musician living in Taipei. He received us in his little studio, nested at the top of one of those 70s buildings, surrounded by plants and flowers, closer to the sky and the god Ra. He has just finished recording his first EP named "heliogram" and soon to be released free for download. In the meanwhile, discover a radiant artist who will take you far from the roaring city.

At the end of her six weeks spent in Taiwan animating a workshop about Samoan dance, choregrapher Tupe Lualua reflected back on her trip and her rich experience making connections between Austronesian cultures.

In June and July 2013, the Fijian navigator Setareki Ledua and the Samoan dancer Tupe Lualua toured Taiwan for a cultural workshop designed to enhance the exchanges and links between Taiwan Austronesians and other cultures from the Pacific. Here are some videos filmed, compiled and edited by members of our team and participants in the workshop.

Setareki Ledua, whom we generally just called "Seta", is 22 years old and he is from Fiji. Between 2010 and 2013, he spent two years navigating on "Uto Ni Yalo" ("Heart of Spirit" in Fijian), one of the canoes from the Pacific Voyager fleet that roam throughout the Pacific ocean using traditional navigation methods. During June and July 2013, he was invited to Taiwan by the Taiwan Society for Pacific Studies for a 6-weeks workshop in order to share his knowlegde and his experience as the youngest Chief Officer ever on the Pacific Voyager fleet.

In this first interview, he had just arrived to Taipei and he shyly introduces himself and traditional canoe sailing:

We asked around the office, asking both foreigner and Taiwanese people how the way people hold their chopsticks influences the way they feel they are perceived or the way they perceive others - we got a range of responses, some which contradicted one another, others which seemed to have been fabricated out of thin air.

On August 1st 2013, Radio Taiwan International celebrated its 85th anniversary. For the occasion, Aurélie Kernaleguen and Xavier Mehl, the hosts of the French language programming, presented a series of portraits in black and white, featuring their colleagues from different departments of the organization. In the following video they introduce their two year project.

Rituals organize and symbolize a way of living together. Through the enactment of rituals, a community expresses its fear, its solidarity and its longings. In traditional societies, performing rituals enables people to organize time and space into a meaningful universe, to renew their commitment to the group to which they belong, and to cement an alliance among them, with nature and with the supernatural.The variety of ritual forms is astounding. It reflects the richness of cultural forms, artworks and humane inventiveness. Among the ethnic minorities who, all together, account for almost ten percent of China's population, those living in the southwest may offer the widest repertoire of ritual performances. Caring for the souls of the dead, exorcising ghosts so as to cure illnesses, rejoicing at marriages, New Year or at harvest time. The four rituals mentioned here all take place in Sichuan province, among people of Yi, Qiang and Ersu ethnic origins.

In the following video Chen Xiaoqi, a theatre student at National Taiwan University of Arts, discusses the concept of rave parties both as a form of theatre and as a form of protest and how the interactive and decentred nature of parties affects the social aspect of the art of DJing.